Open Source Shopping Cart

text size AAA Published December 26, 2011

Overview

An online shopping cart is an important component of an e-commerce website. It is used to organize a customer's items, prepare bills, and provide tools for processing. There are two types of shopping cart programs: proprietary and open source shopping carts. Proprietary shopping carts are developed by programmers for a particular company. Open source shopping carts run on an open source format where the source code of the software is accessible to anyone. These open source shopping carts can be customized in various ways based on your needs, requirements, and budget. Open source shopping carts are available free of cost. These shopping carts can be modified and redistributed based on a customer's needs. Developers also offer extensive technical support options.

Benefits

An open source shopping is always under development and undergoing changes. As a result, new features are regularly added, and the capabilities undergo consistent and dramatic improvements. Open source shopping carts are available free of charge and can be tailored to the needs of a particular website. Open source shopping carts can also be redistributed with these modifications. A potential disadvantage is that open source shopping carts rarely come with a structured technical support base. In any case, many developers and users have created forums to address technical support questions. In general, it is possible to quickly find answers to your questions.

How It Works

Open source shopping carts work like commercial software. The shopping cart can be set up through the HTML code of the website. Typically, these shopping carts include Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) cookies and query strings that allow shopping carts to remember customer information and calculate costs.

Shopping carts should accommodate a variety of payment options, discounts, and offers. Shopping carts should also accommodate credit cards, debit cards, online bank account transfers, electronic checks, and online wire transfers. Both commercial and open source shopping cart packages accommodate these necessary features. In some instances, commercial software might provide enhanced security features, especially for users with limited technical skills. In any case, with time and patience, and open source tool can provide you with the resources that you need.